urge parliamentary scrutiny of the state within a state of the Khakis, especially the dreaded spy agency (DGFI). The interference of the Khakis into state politics will once again jeopardize institutionalization of elective democracy, good governance and secularism. The rogues fear social justice activists, critics, politicians and journalists too - Joy Manush!

Monday, February 18, 2013

Shahbag protesters versus the Butcher of Mirpur

Abdul
Quader Mollah has finally been convicted of war crimes committed in Bangladesh in
1971. Now a huge popular protest in Dhaka's
Shahbag district is demanding the death penalty

TAHMIMA ANAM

IT ALL began with a
victory sign. When Abdul Quader Mollah, assistant secretary-general ofBangladesh'sJamaat-e-Islamiparty, emerged from the supreme court
on the afternoon of Tuesday 4 February, he turned to the press waiting
outside, smiled, and made a victory sign. An odd reaction for a man just
sentenced to life in prison.

When Mollah emerged from
the courthouse, a group of online activists and bloggers assembled toprotestagainst the verdict, demanding that
Mollah, like Azad, be given the death sentence. They set up camp in Shahbag, an
intersection at the heart of Dhaka, near the
university campus, and staged a small sit-in. They collected a few donations
and orderedkhichuri(a mixture of rice and lentils) to
keep them going through the night. Word spread on Facebook and Twitter. The
next day, a few news channels began covering their protest. By the end of the
week, they had managed to put together the biggest mass demonstration the
country has seen in 20 years.

The movement – centred
around Shahbag, which some have renamed Projonmo Chottor(New Generation Roundabout) – shows no
sign of abating. It reached its peak on Friday, when the organisers called a
grand rally. Numbers vary, but are estimated to have been anywhere from 100,000
to 500,000. Traffic in the city, already notoriously slow, ground to a halt.
Because it was a weekend, many people brought their children, their faces
painted in the red and green of the Bangladeshi flag. The mood was like that of
a fairground, with vendors selling fried snacks and spicy puffed rice; small
groups within the throng sat in circles, singing, reciting poems and playing
guitars. A tailor set up his sewing machine, making replicas of the national
flag for people to wear around their heads. A play was staged at one end of the
roundabout.

For people like me who
are opposed to capital punishment, Shahbag has posed an uncomfortable question:
can a movement that began with a call for the death penalty, with cries ofFashi Chai! Fashi Chai!(Let him hang!) go beyond a simple
baying for blood?

But the call for Mollah's death is about more
than revenge. He committed his crimes during Bangladesh's
nine-month struggle for independence from Pakistan in 1971. Mollah and the 11
others who stand trial with him – 10 of whom are members of Jamaat-e-Islami –
are accused of collaborating in war crimes with the Pakistani army. Between
March and December of that year, the Pakistani army unleashed a campaign of
mass murder against Bangladeshi civilians. War crimes were ubiquitous in 1971 –
as is evidenced by the discovery of mass graves throughout the country,
Pakistani documents detailing operations and massacres, hit-lists of local
collaborators, journalists' reports, photographs and video footage, and, most
importantly, the eyewitness accounts of the survivors.

Since Bangladesh's
independence, the state had done little to bring people such as Mollah to
justice. The erasure of the war began in 1972 with the granting of amnesty to
the Pakistani army officers who led the killings. During the decades of
political turmoil that followed in Bangladesh, the war, and its
crimes, were buried, while one regime after another contributed to the
rehabilitation of the Jamaat party. Internationally, charges of genocide were
never formally brought to the United Nations. The world quickly forgot the Bangladesh war.

That is why Mollah
flashed his victory sign outside the courthouse. because, for the first 40
years of independent Bangladesh,
no government had sought to try him; because he, along with the rest of his
party, were courted by politicians at home and abroad. His fellow party leaders
were elected to parliament and made ministers. None of them ever thought they
would appear in court. One of Mollah's fellow accused is rumoured to have
regularly announced in public: "I am a Razakar!" (war
criminal).

The tide finally
turned in 2008, when the Awami League (the party whose then leader, Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman, had led the independence movement) won a landslide victory at
the general election. The campaign included a promise to set up a tribunal to
prosecute those who had committed war crimes in 1971. The International Crimes
Tribunal was set up in 2010. Since then, the court has been gathering evidence
and hearing testimonies against the accused.

Because the trial has
been so long in the making, the verdicts are watched by millions of people
waiting anxiously to see if their families will finally get justice. And for
them, after 42 years, a life sentence for a man convicted of mass murder, arson
and rape was not punishment enough.

In addition to the
perceived inadequacy of the sentence is an abiding anxiety about the way it
will be carried out. It is ingrained in the public imagination that justice
always takes second place to political expediency. Mollah knows that if his
party or its allies were to come to power again, he would almost certainly be
freed. That is why the protesters at Shahbag are calling for his death: it is
the only way they can be sure the episode will come to an end.

In Shahbag, the
organisers have refused to allow political parties to take the stage. Instead,
freedom fighters and activists are invited to speak. Zafar Iqbal, a beloved
children's writer and columnist, arrived on stage mid-afternoon on Friday. The
first thing he did was ask for the crowd's forgiveness. "I have
complained about your generation, saying that all you do is go on the internet
and check your Facebook. I said that you would never come on to the
streets. I am so happy to have been proven wrong today." A few days later,the Bangladesh cricket
team turned upto show
their support. With the chanting and singing spreading across the grounds, the
protesters of Shahbag often resemble a jubilant flash-mob.

Shahbag is unique for Bangladesh on
two important fronts. First isthe prevalence and
visibility of women, who are among the core organisers. Unlike in
many public spaces in Bangladesh,
women have been highly visible. They frequently take the microphone to lead the
crowd in chanting. Second is the movement's use of social networking on
Facebook andTwitter,
and dependence on the 24-hour satellite news channels that have been covering
the protest since the first day.

In the days leading up
to the Mollah verdict, the Jamaat party called a succession ofhartals(strikes),
in an attempt tobring the country to a
standstill. Activists burned cars and clashed with police. Four
innocent people died in the crossfire. Now the Shahbag demonstrators are
calling for an end to Jamaat and its student wing, Shibir. Though the Jamaat
party only won two out of 300 seats in the last election, their presence as a
powerful third party in politics has remained unquestioned – until now. There
is a sense of a shifting political landscape: the people keeping vigil at
Shahbag are young, possibly undecided voters who are looking for leaders.
Who knows what this means for the old guard?

The next few weeks
will be crucial for the Shahbag movement. There is fear, and there is hope.
Fear that the protest will be co-opted by greater political forces; that
violence will erupt and women will no longer be safe; that the cries for
Mollah's hanging will overpower all other forms of resistance, and anyone who
disagrees will be branded a traitor. But there is hope, too: that the protest
will become a movement for a fair trial, and for a final, definitive and
unbiased account of what happened in 1971; for the strengthening of secular,
progressive politics in Bangladesh.